The Go-Getter: A Story That Tells You How To Be One

by Peter B. Kyne

“Bill, it was cruel—damnably cruel, but I had a big job for you and I had to find out a lot of things about you before I entrusted you with that job. So I arranged to give you the Degree of the Blue Vase, which is the supreme test of a go-getter.

You told me what to do, but you did not insult my intelligence by telling me how to do it.

Leaders—whether managers or front-line workers—make decisions every day, and decisions require courage: a belief in your reasoning and your experience, as well as the ability to stand by the decisions once they’re made.

Go-getters, by essence, compete against themselves, not against benchmarks or colleagues.

What is the blue vase? For you, it’s that impossible project that lands in your lap, that seems to have nothing to do with your job or your priorities, that comes from nowhere and pushes you to the limits of your energy, your resourcefulness, your problem-solving, and your morale.

Persistence doesn’t mean anything if you don’t exhaust 100 percent of the possibilities on your way to meeting a challenge.